Life on the Hinterweb

We have a Windows machine in the study, largely for playing games that do not run on the Macintosh. Yesterday it caught a virus: it kept launching large video advertisements for the Kinsey movie. After beating it with a rubber hose for about twenty minutes, the ad virus succumbed and joined the choir invisible.

I then thought that I should perhaps upgrade the McAfee virus-protection program on the machine. That turned out to be a nasty and nearly impossible process: McAfee kept throwing pop-up windows up on the screen trying to "improve" my order from $35 to $95 or $125, warning me of all the horrible things that would happen to me if I did not "upgrade" my order. Only by clever parsing of sentences and clicking the correct buttons was I able to repulse this social engineering attack. Then I noticed that the black-inkjet cartridge in the Epson printer attached to the machine was low. I replaced it--and my printer driver promptly threw a warning box up on the screen: I had installed a non-Epson print cartridge, Epson "could not guarantee print quality," and would I like to order genuine Epson print cartridges off of the Epson website? No.

I don't like it when strange movies take over my computer and use it to display adware. I don't like it when Epson lies to me about the quality of Epson-compatible inkjet cartridges. I don't like it when McAfee makes it hard to avoid spending more on virus protection than I need to.

It's a jungle out there in the Windows world. Have Microsoft and Epson and McAfee considered the long-run consequences of the reputations that they are so eagerly creating?

Comments

[Kuas]

Heh. Indeed. I recently renewed my McAfee virus scan. Ditto. And it wouldn't let me do it with Firefox. I had to fire up Internet Explorer for the first time in months.

[Dano]

This is exactly the reason why, Brad, our economy is sluggish.

D

[drduster]

Have Microsoft and Epson and McAfee considered the long-run consequences of the reputations that they are so eagerly creating?

Yes

It called, The Arrogance of Xerox. The kind of mistreatment you describe is nothing compared to how Xerox treated customers. One, for example, couldn't buy a machine and then charge others for making copies. In fact, you couldn't even buy a machine--you had to rent.

Look at Xerox now and you see MS of the future.

[Ian Welsh]

There are other virus scanners than McAfee. Don't reward such behaviour with your money.

[Buce]

Howard Hughes' father did not get rich by selling drilbits; he rented them. IBM did not get rich selling mainframes; it rented them. Tony Soprano doesn't sell the restaurant. He lets you run the restaurant and he gets the towel concession. Xerox's problems did not stem from trying to skim the consumer surplus; rather, that seems to be one of the few decisions they made right.

[boing]

Get rid of McAfee and get AVG, which is free and works exquisitely. The printer I can't help you with. I'm sure Epson will get around to doing that for MAC, Linux, OS/2, DOS, UNIX, and whatever else they think they can get away with or need to, to keep up that lucrative cartridge market. Maybe they'll port that to the next set of TRS-80 drivers, or APPLE II E. Greed is one of the few backwardly compatible cross platform things these days.

[alan]

Do I have to point out that Epson does not benefit from the sale of after-market "Epson-compatible" ink cartridges? They have nothing to do with those unwanted popups, unless you want to blame it on their hook-and-reel business model.

[nk]

My computer got hit with about everything possible (virus, pests, pop-ups and who knows what else) during Q4 of 2004.

I dug out through the following
1. Symantec Norton Anti Virus
2. Windows XP service pack 2
3. Spybot
4. Ad-Aware (lavasoft)
5. A lot of manually identification and deletion of junk on my PC

6. I also downloaded Microsoft Anti Spyware (probably after steps 1-5 got rid of most stuff). It is (or at least was) in Beta version. Up front MSFT told everyone it was "Beta" and did not provide any formal support for the product. This "Beta" point is a very thing to note. The Beta version had some noticeable glitches. The glitches can disrupt your ability to use your PC in any fashion. People (including me) figured out how to fix the glitches themselves on a MSFT-sponsored community discussion board.

One admirable think about MSFT: they are tapping into the collective knowledge of PC users (blogs, community message boards, volunteers, etc). Have you checked out the scobleizer blog? One drawback on MSFT: Spybot may still catch things that MSFT AntiSpyware does not.

[Jacques Distler]

If it's for playing games, why is it connected to the internet?

Pull the ethernet card outa that puppy, and your Windows machine will be a lot less trouble (while still serving its intended function).

[Fr33d0m]

I had the same problem and switched to Avast antivirus (www.avast.com). It caught things McAfee let in. I can't vouch for AVG though I've only heard positive things about it. I can vouch for Avast. I get daily signature updates and love its screensaver that runs the check when my systems are not being used.

[JimPortlandOR]

Greed likes big markets. If the Mac market gets big enough, the greedy others will be there too. Why bother with MAC when so little of the WinXP market has been exploited?

McAfee is impossible to do business with. Period. They rely on popups to get new versions of software, and popups are blocked! Many other problems too. I just gave up finally, and got Zone Alarm - which was rated by PC mag as editor's choice. It works, but causes other problems sometimes. And Spybot is needed too. The load on a fast PC from the two is significant.

As much as I like competition, anti-virus and other security/privacy software should be integrated into the operating system. No third party software in this area is compatible very long. Any XP update can wipe you out.

Sigh! Why oh why does life have to be this complex? I've spent many days doing nothing but keep my PC running. I want my tombstone to reflect the days spent on PC troubleshooting, as a warning to the future.

[Rob]

Of course the real question is: Did you buy Rome:Total War yet?

[A. Zarkov]

McAfee is worse than that. They make you agree not to make public disparaging comments about McAfee software as a condition of your license to run their software. I think someone sued them over this, but I don’t know the disposition of that case. But I still hate Windows and have bought a new Mac G5.

I use the following:

linksys router with a firewall
Zone Alarm
Norton Anti-virus
Spybot
Adaware

If I’m missing something else, I’m all ears.

[me]

Brad, You know that Berkeley gives the best version of Norton Anti-Virus free to all students, staff, & faculty?

http://software.berkeley.edu/

It's a good investment by the school to minimize the chance that infected computers get on the campus network.

[putanm]

On my Windows XP computer, every use of the letters "bed" - as in the word "succumbed" in the first paragraph of Brad DeLong's posting above - is underlined as a link, to find a bed seller, I guess. Maybe the next time the word "succumbed" appears in text, I'll finally decide to buy a bed online. Likewise, the letters "mba," as in "embarass," are always an underlined link. Maybe someday soon that helpful link will lead me to enroll online for a graduate degreee in business. Oh yes, every use of the word, "business" is an underlined link too. I tried anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-adware programs, but this still lingers.

Then there's the ad that intrudes on the left margin of my screen most of the time when I open a new web page. In a year, I have never used the links featured in that margin, presumably directed to a few sites. But it just keeps happening. Recently, instead of a list of sites it has started showing flickering and moving graphics. What a waste.

At least, through much effort, I recovered my desktop image. For months, it was a gruesome black screen with a blood-red eyeball on it, and an ad for software to delete it.

I've had to learn to live with some pop-ups, because when I had the pop-up protection fully engaged, I could not send work messages from my home computer in my office Outlook system - the window in which I would write a new Outlook message was blocked as a pop-up.

Using the internet in Windows is wading through all that junk.

[Anon]

This is why more computer-savvy users don't use Windows. This is not a slap at you; just a statement of fact. We got tired of this bullshit, and we acted to change it; a certain investment in learning Linux will pay off over time in reduced aggravation from such things. Virus scanner? What virus scanner? Why would I need such a thing?

And of course McAfee, Epson et. al. have considered the cost to their reputations. Reputation cost is not on the balance sheet. More sales of printer cartridges or ultra-plus-super virus protection appear on the balance sheet this year and are used in calculating the CEO's bonus in January. The decision is easy, not even close.

And wait until you buy a couple of print cartridges on sale, throw them in your closet, and then later discover that that same printer driver enforces an expiration date on them - yep, unused, perfectly fine cartridges will be rejected if they're too old.

[Bill]

Get rid of the Epson, get a nice Canon. Then go to inkgrabber.com and pay only $2-3 per cartridge.

[james]

power has been terribly imbalanced in most sectors of life for sometime

what you describe in windows-world does not differ significantly from how things work in corporate-world, media-world, or political-world

[TomG]

Brad
WTF is the matter with you? You buy deficient software and blame it on windows?? (not that I'm a huge windows fan). Try using software that actually works (AVG plus zone alarm -- free for both!! (holy cow, what a world we live in)) rather than software that is the most expensive ("so it must be good!") and doesn't work at all. Then, after buying the most expensive (and crappy) stuff, you blame "the system" because you have crap software.

Come on, Brad, get it together.
Tom Gillis

[Cool Hand Luke]

Very simple and all free;
1) Lavasofts Ad-Aware
2) SpyBot
3) Avast Anti-Virus
4) Zone Alarm fire wall
Have not had a problem since I've put the condoms on.
Try a search for "AVS Forum Free Killer Apps". A handy list of all the free stuff that works.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate..."

[Stuart]

The only way I've found to happily exist in a Windows world AND be connected to the Internet is to do the following:

1) Check for and install Windows/Office updates everyday
2) AV software...I've always had good luck with Symantec, but as in 1 you have to get paranoid and keep it absolutely current
3) Here's the biggie...run something like AdSubtract and set it to block EVERYTHING. Adds a bit of nuisance to your browsing, as you have to selectively disable filters to get most sites to work properly (j-script & cookies are enough for most sites), but it's a small price to pay.

Bottom line is you stay in control of what's going on as much as possible.

My and my wife's PC have been virus/spyware free for years this way.

I've tried to get our daughter to do this with her laptop, but she thinks it's censorship to filter Internet content like that. Of course she's not the one that reformats her hard drive and reinstalls her computer from scratch every Summer when she's home from college.

[PaulB]

The most effective (and entirely free) changes that you should make are in your own behavior and in the default behavior of your browser.

1. Never download or install any software to your system unless you trust both the software and the source of the software. If there's something that looks really useful, I routinely run a Google search for "[useful program name] spyware." Mostly, though, I do without, since the potential cost is almost always higher than the potential benefit.

2. Tighten up your security settings in Internet Explorer or your other browser. Disable the options for downloading ActiveX controls, signed or unsigned, disable installation of desktop items, and so on. Most of these malware programs don't exploit actual security bugs, they simply use normal protocol. Turn off that protocol and you will be far safer.

3. Never click on a link (either on a web page or in e-mail -- especially in e-mail) unless you know where that link goes and what it will do.

Just doing these three simple things will protect your system far more effectively than any third-party program. I do not run an always-active anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-worm, or anti-malware program of any kind because I don't need to. Once every couple of weeks, I scan my system for spyware, malware, trojan horses and viruses. So far, I haven't found a single one, nor am I likely to.

[Auros]

For those using Spybot SnD and LavaSoft AdAware, I know from experience (helping to clean up a friend's machien) that WebRoot SpySweeper has an overlapping-but-distinct set of things that it wipes out. So I use that as well as SnD and AdWare.

Norton SystemWorks is a worthwhile investment, if you're dealing with Windoze. Aside from the AntiVirus feature (considerably less annoying than McAfee), it has defrag and disk scan features that, unlike MS's included stuff, do not suck. (MS's scandisk can actually damage disks.)

[Karsten M. Self]

I don't run Windows as a preference, but I've adminned it in the past. Most recently was 2004, running a computer lab for the local Boys & Girls Club.

I ended up interviewed for a New York Times article, Barbarians at The Digital Gate (Timothy O'Brien & Saul Hansell), which discusses the adware / spyware industry in general.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/business/yourmoney/19gator.html

I felt what was missing from the article was a discussion of the culture of Windows, and how much it differs from the Free Software world. As I put it, there's very much no comparison to the pain factor, and there are some very fundamental principles at work. The result is the popular Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture essay I wrote shortly afterwards.

http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Rants/spyware.html

The principles revolve around transparancy, goals, and who is being served (coprorate, marketing, and advertising interests, on the one hand, vs. end-users on the other). Problems for which there isn't a technical fix -- these are very much cultural issues.

It ultimately comes down to trust. And Microsoft cannot be trustworthy computing.